Some History

Models and Abstractions

A model is an abstraction or simplification of the real thing, where the model-builder throws away most of the real thing leaving only its essence.

Models reflect

Twins interact

Urban Analytics High Frequency
Urban Theory1 Low Frequency
Shallow copy Copy by reference
Deep copy Copy by value

A Federation of Computers

A Federation of Twins

\(\ldots\) in social systems, we can define many types of twins that reflect a multitude of theoretical perspectives, each of which reflect different features of the real system

The Human in the Loop

Efficiency & Resilience

  • Highly efficient system \(\approx\) brittle
  • Highly redundant system \(\approx\) resilient

Thank you!

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Batty, M. 1990. Invisible Cities.” Environment and Planning B 17 (2):127–30.
———. 2013. “Big Data, Smart Cities and City Planning.” Dialogues in Human Geography 3 (3). SAGE Publications:274–79.
———. 2018. “Digital Twins.” Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. Sage Publications Sage UK: London, England.
———. 2019. “A Map Is Not the Territory, or Is It?” Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England.
———. 2021. “Multiple Models.” Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science. SAGE Publications Sage UK: London, England.
———. 2024. “Digital Twins in City Planning.” Nature Computational Science 4 (3). Nature Publishing Group US New York:192–99.
Batty, M., and R. Milton. 2023. “Building a Digital Twin for British Cities.” arXiv Preprint arXiv:2312.03674.
Gelernter, David. 1993. Mirror Worlds: Or the Day Software Puts the Universe in a Shoebox... How It Will Happen and What It Will Mean. Oxford University Press.
Reades, J., F. Calabrese, A. Sevtsuk, and C. Ratti. 2007. Cellular census: Explorations in urban data collection.” IEEE Pervasive Computing 6 (3):30–38.
Reades, J., J. De Souza, and P. Hubbard. 2019. “Understanding Urban Gentrification Through Machine Learning.” Urban Studies 56 (5):922–42.